Devour
by siiva
Summary: She couldn't quite pinpoint the moment when she'd begun to feel unrecognizable, even to herself. But it was his words that had sent her to that place. Is there any chance of repairing whatever Elena and Damon once had, or is their dissolution permanent?
1. INTRODUCTION

**DEVOUR**

****"_AND I'LL LOVE YOU, IF YOU LET ME.  
AND I'LL LOVE YOU, IF YOU WON'T MAKE ME STARVE."_

**A/N:** This is my first Damon x Elena fiction in quite a while. These two really bring out my drive to write, but I have a habit of getting a thousand ideas for one shots, instead of actual stories. So, here goes nothing! Read and review, please.

Elena sighed and raised a hand to clear a circle in the shower's curtain of steam on the mirror, giving herself the same numb once over she had more than once, as of late.

She couldn't quite pinpoint the moment when she'd begun to feel unrecognizable, even to herself. Day by day, she supposed, it had happened, until it finally reached a point when she realized that it was hard to remember how she'd looked as a child, as a teenager, as anyone or anything that was not a simple parody of beauty centuries older than she could ever claim. Her dark eyes, the smooth olive skin of her face, the curve of her lips — every facet belonged to someone else, another slight at the hands of the creeping erasure that had taken over her life, turning everything that was once normal, sensible, and _human_ to the dark and unknown of the supernatural. It was a gradual process, but in every moment, she could feel the progress it had made; those who remained close to Elena as well as unharmed, untainted, or unknowing of the truth about what went bump in the night were very few people, and even those elite few had begun to feel the effects of the world she'd fallen into. It was everywhere, touching upon everything.

She envisioned, for a guilty second or two, Katherine's cold sneer on her own face in the mirror. The vision faded quickly as Damon's words from three nights prior echoed in her ears – '_You and Katherine have a lot more in common than just your looks' –_ and Elena found herself perfectly incapable of meeting her own gaze.

He had only been saying the sorts of things she should have been expecting from him, she rationalized, his commentary well placed and expertly worded to wound. It was what Damon was good at, making everyone around him hurt. She knew that. She _knew_ that, and yet, she couldn't seem to shake the nagging insecurity that more than anything wanted to believe that he had simply been speaking from a place of anger, that he didn't truly mean what he had said to her. The more and more she thought the idea over, the more her emotions fluctuated; she was furious with him for saying something so callous and cold. She was hurt that he would compare her to someone who brought so much pain to so many people. She was angry with herself for allowing him to slip under her skin so effortlessly, once again.

But most of all, and most devastatingly, she was scared that he was right.

That last emotion reigned supreme, canceling out the others even as a stray thought in the back of her mind. The very idea that she and Katherine could check off manipulation and selfishness on the list of shared qualities, right next to beauty and taste in men, was rotting her sanity from the inside out, even three long nights after Damon gave the notion life by speaking it out loud. It had kept her up for the better portion of those nights, kept her eyes carefully diverted from themselves in the mirror, and left an emptiness where the triumph of beating Damon at his own game of exploitation had been, and yet, she could do nothing to rid herself of it. She couldn't bring herself to speak the idea to Stefan, or even to pen it in her journal, unable to do anything that might give the notion more tangibility or validity.

It took three nights of working up her courage, but by day four, when dark circles signaling sleeplessness had begun cropping up under her eyes, she knew she had a problem that merited solving. Even if the only solution was to speak to him, to put herself at something of a huge disadvantage as far as who had the control, she knew she had no other options. The only way to rid herself of constant and mind plaguing worry was to verify that what he had said had not come from a place of honesty, wherever one of those might be hiding, inside him.

And so, she went.

The drive was short and familiar, the timing corresponding excellently with when she knew Stefan would be out hunting. There would be plenty of time for the very brief conversation she and Damon needed to have, just enough time, she theorized, for him to admit that he hadn't meant what he said, and for her to leave. There were no additional frills needed for Elena's sanity, that evening. Just confirmation.

Raising her small fist and tightening her jacket around her small form, she knocked on the wooden door. She could go right in, as she had hundreds of times, or even use her key, but somehow, the situation felt more formal than that. In her mind, it needed to be conducted like a deposition, a short and clear version of what was said, and the intents behind it, before anything else came into play. And somehow, it always did; emotions, egos, interruptions. They routinely found a way into every conversation between Elena and Damon, and they were something she was too fragile to entertain, that evening. She knew that much when the sight of his face caused a swell of anger, and simultaneously pain, within her.

"He isn't here, Elena," he told her immediately, his tone coloring the words more cold and despondent than she remembered her name ever being, on his lips. It was difficult to form a reply to that, but she managed.

"I need to talk… to you," she stated plainly, summoning all of her strength to look like something other than a ragdoll version of herself. It occurred to her that in her current state, no one would confuse her with Katherine; her eyes were too lifeless, punctuated by dark circles, her voice too quiet. It didn't draw any pity out of Damon, though she hadn't anticipated any other reaction from him.

"So _now_ we've got things worth discussing?" he asked, eyes widening in sarcastic realization. "Apologies all around, but I don't think I have any interesting information you can use me for, this time."

She visibly winced at the accusation, unaccustomed to the clinical feel to the conversation transpiring between them. She hated him, passionately even, for what he had done to her brother, but even afterwards, he had not given up atoning for himself. It was preferable to the living stone that stood before her now, eyes dark and unreadable, without the slightest hint of remorse or affection towards her.

"Damon, please," she prompted him, pinching the bridge of her nose as she collected herself. "Five minutes, one question, and I'll be perfectly content to resume our lives, separate of each other."

He mulled the suggestion over for a moment, leaving her on edge as she knew he would have no issues slamming the door in her face were he anything but up for conversation. After that long pause, however, he stepped aside and opened the door for her.

"Five minutes," he echoed her, sounding bored and somewhat suspicious, as she slipped inside the warmth of the boardinghouse.

**A/N: **And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end. For now. Updates soon!


	2. LIARS ARE WE

**DEVOUR:  
**_**CHAPTER TWO**_

_**A/N:**_Thank you all so much for the kind reviews! I'm so excited to bring you another chapter, though I'm feeling kinda blah on this one. The next will be a little more lively, I assure you.

The words didn't spring from her lips in the five minutes after she entered the boardinghouse, frozen on her tongue for the better part of ten as the two of them stood, locked in a battle of fraying nerves. His unreadable eyes ripped into her, even clouded with the vague haze that the liquor he was sipping left behind. Whatever it was he saw within her, however, he obviously didn't find it very interesting, flatness overtaking his orbs after just a split moment of intrigue. She looked away underneath that pressure.

"I need to ask you something," she finally spoke, willing her eyes to meet his, to appear strong and self confident in the face of the situation. It was the only way to win with Damon, and she knew it. Despite the courage those six words had taken, he didn't dignify her hesitant start with much of a response.

"By all means," he implored, making a gesture with his hand as he took a long drink from his glass.

"What you said the other night, about me. About Katherine," she clarified, wringing her hands slightly. She could scarcely remember the last time she was so nervous, a light tremble in her hands that matched the telltale signs of her dry throat as she attempted to speak. "It hurt."

That was the best she could do presently, unable to even meet his eyes, once more.

"And you've come here looking for what, exactly?" he asked, eyes wide with disbelief that she should even possess the audacity to talk to _him_ about hurt. "For me to tell you it isn't true? Isn't Stefan enough of an ego stroker for you, anymore?"

She winced; it had been idiotic to think that Damon of all people would overlook the insecurity she was exposing. It didn't matter how many times Stefan told her or how many times she told herself that she was not and would never be Katherine, because she needed to hear it from the person who had vocalized the fear she'd been bearing in mind, all along. He'd opened the box, and now, she needed _him_ to shut it.

"You didn't mean what you said," she stated, only to second guess that certainty. "Did you?"

"Did you _mean_ to behave like Katherine?" he challenged, though his voice was free of inflection. "Selfishly, manipulatively, just after what you wanted, consequences be damned?"

She had intended to, and they both knew it. Perhaps she had not set out with Katherine as the blueprint for her actions, but she had known what she was doing before it was done, and the end result was something like the unflattering adjectives Damon was hurling her way. It had felt right at the time, giving him a taste of his own medicine, but karma was effectively the biggest bitch Elena's conscience knew.

"That isn't how it happened. We're not friends, and we weren't then," she countered, diving desperately for the loophole she believed herself to have found.

"Of course not. Because it's not as though you let on that I'd be digging myself out of that hole if I helped you," he sarcastically agreed, bitterness rising in his voice as he continued. "And the arrow to the back thing? I suppose that doesn't really merit a friendship, either."

And then there was that — the arrow to the back. The arrow he'd taken without a second thought in efforts to protect her, an act which now weighed heavy on her shoulders. It had been too late by that point to drop the charade and tell him flat out that there was no hope of salvaging whatever they'd had, before he killed her brother. If anything, the arrow had only given her more reason to press on with the ruse, lest she risk Damon withdrawing his help and his protection.

"That doesn't make me like her," she defended herself, weakly.

"Had it been the first time you proved yourself quite the master manipulator, no," he pointed out, his words immediately calling to mind another instance of betrayal. The grimoire incident. She remembered his face painted with shock and grief as he lamented having trusted her, just before he promised to turn her, should Stefan stand in the way of him rousing the tomb vampires. She'd nearly forgotten the look on his face when she'd let him down, her promise to him afterwards, and even the faith she'd had in him which was unshakable enough that she'd offered him her vervain necklace for a moment in time.

"That isn't fair. That was a long time ago, Damon. And a completely different situation."

"Maybe I was wrong," he finally sacrificed after a long moment of silence between them, allowing her to breathe a little easier before her chest tightened with his next words. "At least Katherine has the balls to own what she is, instead of making these pathetic excuses."

Rage boiled inside Elena, tainted with the fear and sadness she'd been cycling through.

"You're in no position to judge anyone, and you know it! You _killed_ my _brother_, if I remember correctly," she shouted, unable to keep her temper completely in check at the moment. In a flash, she was blinking wearily at an image of Damon, his movement too close and fast for her eyes to focus.

"And I've been atoning for it, every moment since. But I still know what you are, what you're capable of, when you want to be," he said, a note of hurt evident in his voice as he spoke, face inches from hers. There was nowhere else to focus her gaze that on the pools of liquid blue that stared back at her, an intensity in his eyes that, though it burned her, kept her locked in place. They stood that way, frozen with a hyper awareness and anticipation, for a total of sixty-three heartbeats — Elena counted — though it felt like much longer. As suddenly as he'd approached, however, she became aware that Damon was now speaking from across the room.

"But what does it even matter to you what I think?" he asked, clearly working his way underneath her skin, again. "I'm nothing to you, not even worth hating, anymore. Who gives a damn what I think?"

"I'm not like her, and you know that. I know you do," Elena ignored his question, finally growing tired of holding in the emotional outburst she'd been teetering on the edge of for days. She could feel the tears stinging hot in her eyes, surfacing for reasons she couldn't quite explain. She ignored them as well, pressing on with what needed to be said. "I would never hurt you just for fun. I would never trick you the way she did. I make mistakes, sure, but you can't look at me and tell me you hate me the way you hate her."

"And if I did?" he theorized, face showing the concentration he placed over her words.

If he were to look at her and tell her he wanted her dead the way he wanted Katherine dead, or the he hated her with even nearly the same intensity, she didn't know what her reaction would be. Part of her felt as though her heart would shatter into a million pieces, but this was the part of her that was decidedly going unaddressed. The rest of her, iced over by the hatred she had tried to adopt towards him, had no answer for him.

"You'd be a liar." Her voice was small, but she was sure the sincerity in her statement came across.

"At least that would make two of us," he shot back, not bothering to deny her accusation. It left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, knowing that lying would be useless, at that point. Her keen eye was somehow trained to detect the slightest notes of dishonesty in him, his pattern a telltale sign she recognized, on spot. Rather than risk more conversation in that same vein, he effectively ended it.

"But five minutes was up some time ago, and Bambi won't keep Stefan busy, forever," he pointed out.

"You never answered my question," she protested, urgently.

"Tomorrow, you'll have your answer."


End file.
